What's with all these German speaking NPCs?

[falloutgod13]

Seriously annoying if you don't know German, I don't sprechen the Duestch. Okay? Quit speaking to me in German. It's just irritating when they speak half-German and less than half-English and Henry somehow understands what they're saying from like 3 English words in 10 word sentence. LOL How? I have no idea what they're saying most of the time and at this point I just started skipping dialogue when I start hearing them talk in German. I don't know who thought this was a good idea to put in the game but it's terrible. The subtitles are also written in German which makes zero sense to me. I think the only person I've seen translated is Adder(he's turkish? I forget), which is oddly inconsistent with everything else.

It's irritating to me because it's not just a couple of quirky NPCs, no, I've run into over 20 of them now. Some are just random encounters, but regardless, most people don't talk like this. It's just weird. Why would you talk in your language to someone who doesn't understand it?

Part of me wishes I paid attention in my German classes more than I did. I came away only being able to say a few things. One of them being, "Ich bin ein obst kuchen."(I am a fruit cake.) Needless to say, I did not take the class seriously and lament that I could have and would have made use of that knowledge while playing this game. That aside, the writing of dialogue for NPCs in this this manner is still complete rubbish.

[Toblm]

I find that it adds to the immersion.

Bohemia at the time was a melting pot. German speakers, Czech speakers, Hungarian, other Slavic dialects all would have coexisted, peacefully or otherwise. Henry would have spoken Czech and apparently had a working but incomplete understanding of German. And/or the German speaking burghers had an incomplete understanding of Czech and fell back on their German. This is natural for a polyglot.

Warhorse is using language (and accent) to develop the ambiance of medieval Bohemia.

[Abu]

You can figure out the general idea based on context.

[✿Sqüirrel✿]

I for one am glad they don't listen to people like you over things like this.

[wjpower2003]

Originally posted by Abu:

You can figure out the general idea based on context.

This

I did GCSE German back in the late 90's and got an E grade (so I wasn't very good), and even I can understand the German NPCs from the context of what's being said (usually).

I also assume that the parts of dialogue which are entirely German are probably just exclamations (like "Oh for the love of God") so aren't really important to the story.

Sir Tobi mentioned in a live stream that in Germany, when Germans speak broken English with German words included, it's called "Denglish". I also think it helps add to the immersion of living in a medieval, Holy Roman melting pot.

[Psycho_Soyer]

I watched enough Hogan's Heros in my youth that I have no problem understanding French German and the Kings English.
I even put bilingual on my job applications.

[spartakisteqc]

I absolutely love it! It helps the immersion a lot and it can be hilarious like during Menhardt quest in Kuttenberg. Instead of whining, you might want to learn a second language.

Adder is a Pole not a Turk.

[Frizbee]

Originally posted by Toblm:

I find that it adds to the immersion.

Bohemia at the time was a melting pot. German speakers, Czech speakers, Hungarian, other Slavic dialects all would have coexisted, peacefully or otherwise. Henry would have spoken Czech and apparently had a working but incomplete understanding of German. And/or the German speaking burghers had an incomplete understanding of Czech and fell back on their German. This is natural for a polyglot.

Warhorse is using language (and accent) to develop the ambiance of medieval Bohemia.

Yeah, I personally agree. I like that some of the language (even in the original the Cumans spoke other than English)

However, I can see the OP's point that it'd be nice to have a translation in english subtitles even sometimes, even if it was a skill that had to be learned in game (like Reading in the original)

[FruitBat Man]

I would love translations to english like they did for Adder. Didn't they mostly speak Czech? I know there was some English. I'm by no means a scholar on the subject especially in this part of the world at this time, but wouldn't there be less English speaking than we get? I'm not looking for 100% historical accuracy, but I'm not put off by other languages either.

Translating it all would be a fair compromise, but I won't lose sleep if it never happens.

[Dansoprazole]

Sounds like someone isn't very good at the langschwert. 🤣

[Baron01]

If you paid any attention to the game, only flavor text is in German. I have yet to encounter any quest-related talk or instruction in German, if there are any hints or instructions for quests those German speakers switch to English, good example is the Kuttenberg sword-master quest.

From the historical and partially geographical perspective, Czechia/Bohemia was largely under influence of German kingdoms, a lot of trading routes were going from Germany through Bohemia further to the East and South. Also, the region, in which KCD2 is situated is very close to German regions so movement of people was natural especially considering that Kuttenberg was very rich town at that time so it attracted traders from other regions.

[Hotjimmies]

Skill issue
Brainlet
@op

[Barrier]

I like it, it reminds me of how half the words in our dialect are german because we used to be part of the hapsburg empire

[Hellsteeth30]

There's a roadside encounter where you run into a German knight who speaks no Czech at all. Quite funny.

[Aasimar[GER]]

it glorious...
exept the hungarian... they speak.. hungarian
or sometimes people speak latin..
theres a frech guy...
theres some jiddish
italian
not sure what that musa guy is speaking

must be hard to live in an USA bubble..
where 25% of the population speak a different language, like spanish, or korean, arabic, french.. oh there are also german speaking people in the USA

[duncanjmcintyre]

I like it for flavour.